It's not that low-income people aren't welcome downtown. It's that we don't build development smartly. When you have an entire area of nothing but rental units, regardless if they're low or mixed income, you double the odds of that neighborhood going south fairly quickly.
Like I said in another post, I've experienced it. As a kid, I grew up lower middle class and my parents couldn't afford to buy a home, so, we rented. We lived on a street where every apartment, duplex and fourplex was a rental unit. The area, even with decent management from time to time, fell apart in the 90s, at the height of the gang problem in SLC, because it attracted a certain type of people. It wasn't that everyone who lived there were gang members or drug addicts - but it only takes a handful to bring down an entire neighborhood and it becomes more a problem when you have an increase in rentals.
Now I get mixed-income development - but it only works when you mix it in with established areas. A mixed-income apartment complex in the heart of SugarHouse is not going to automatically make the area less desirable. But if you have nothing but mixed-income apartments, apartments also geared for special needs and fixed incomes, it does become a bigger problem.
Less middle income residents will want to live there and then, over time, as we've already seen, the area decreases in desirability because those middle income residents move out. Read the reviews on Citifront - reviews that aren't old, and you'll see what I mean:
Quote:
The worst place to live. Would not let us out of our lease even after we witnessed drug deals in our hallway.
Prostitution, Drugs and homeless people if you don't mind this you can spend way to much and call this home.
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That was from two days ago. Didn't another forumer look at renting there and was appalled by the conditions? Maybe it'll get better - but that's a big chance to take in an area that doesn't have many chances left.
That really is my point here. We need to better develop these areas and I don't think we're doing it. Ideally, this holdings company could take the money it would invest in demolishing these houses and building an apartment project and invest in rehabbing these homes to put on the market so that middle income families can move into that neighborhood.
Or demolish those homes and build new affordable ones like they did right next to the freeway between 300 North and 400 North a few years ago.
But when you build an entire area of rental units, in an already lower income neighborhood, you're only positioning yourself for problems down the road because there isn't much to invest in a rental unit - and those who do rent are not looking to remain there for long. It's generally a temporary move, and that high turnover does not make a sustainable neighborhood.
But I do think rental housing, even if it's still rentals, is better than rental apartments because it at least gives the resident something to be proud of - when you're living in an apartment, you're at the entire beck and call of your neighbors.
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